Guido Schmidt

Guido Schmidt (15 January 1901-5 December 1957) was Foreign Minister of Austria from 11 July 1936 to 11 March 1938, succeeding Kurt Schuschnigg and preceding Wilhelm Wolf.

Biography
Guido Schmidt was born in Bludenz, Vorarlberg, Austria on 15 January 1901, and he met future chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg while attending a Jesuit school in Feldkirch. He received his law doctorate in 1924 and joined the Austrian diplomatic service the next year, serving in the office of President Wilhelm Miklas after 1928. Schmidt joined Engelbert Dollfuss' Fatherland Front in 1933 after previously having been a member of the Christian Social Party of Austria, and he served as Foreign Minister from 1936 until the Anschluss in 1938. He retired rather than join Arthur Seyss-Inquart's Nazi government, but he became director of the Reichwerke industrial conglomerate at Linz under Hermann Goering. In 1945, he was imprisoned by the Allied Powers for his Nazi sympathies and for "high treason", but he was acquitted in 1947. After 1950, he worked on the executive board of the Semperit rubber and plastic company, and he died in Vienna in 1957 at the age of 56.